This disclosure relates to a gas turbine engine, and more particularly to an alignment tool that can be used to align and install a component of a gas turbine engine.
Gas turbine engines typically include a compressor section, a combustor section and a turbine section. In general, during operation, air is pressurized in the compressor section and is mixed with fuel and burned in the combustor section to generate hot combustion gases. The hot combustion gases flow through the turbine section, which extracts energy from the hot combustion gases to power the compressor section and other gas turbine engine loads.
The compressor and turbine sections of the gas turbine engine typically include alternating rows of rotating blades and stationary vanes. The rotating blades either create or extract energy from the hot combustion gases that are communicated through the gas turbine engine, and the vanes convert the velocity of the airflow into pressure and prepare the airflow for the next set of blades.
Some stages of the gas turbine engine may include variable vanes. Variable vanes can be rotated between a variety of angular positions to improve efficiency, reliability and power output of the gas turbine engine. Each variable vane may be mounted to a synchronizing ring that is moveable to influence the positioning of each variable vane.
A rigging procedure may be performed to establish the vane angle of the variable vane relative to the synchronizing ring and/or other components of a variable vane system. There may be a need to align the variable vanes to some known points during the rigging procedure. Current tools used during rigging procedures have not effectively achieved this desired alignment and can be susceptible to human error.